The Resonance of the Salt-Mirrors

About this book

In the year 2144, Earth is a blinding expanse of lethal salt flats known as the White Desert. Humanity survives aboard three massive, silicate-hulled mobile cities—the Solstice, the Equinox, and the Zenith—known as Prism-Crawlers. These cities must perpetually chase the Great Umbra, a moving patch of shade cast by a decaying orbital shield called Aegis-7. If they fall behind into the relentless sunlight, they burn. Twelve-year-old mechanic apprentice Kiet Aminu discovers a terrifying anomaly: the Aegis-7 is wobbling, causing the shadow to shrink faster than predicted. As the crawlers begin to collide and compete for the narrowing darkness, tensions rise between the leadership of the cities. Kiet, along with a navigator prodigy named Rani and a contraband smuggler named Bala, unearths an ancient schematic suggesting the crawlers were never meant to just follow the shadow, but to communicate with the shield itself. Racing against political sabotage and the encroaching heat, the trio must unite the fractious cities to trigger a resonance frequency that could stabilize the shield, or doom them all to the scorching light.